Same roots
Why Esther & Ruth.
E&R
New Season. Same Roots.
We build the haircare system that carries you through this season — without losing who you are.
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Mission
Your Hair. Your Story. Your Roots.
A season of renewal, not retreat.
Perimenopause is not a fading — it is a new season, and like every season it asks for different care. Esther & Ruth exists to reclaim this season for renewal: a coordinated hair and scalp system built around the named physiological shifts of the menopause transition, so women can move through it with strength, dignity and roots that still run deep.
Vision
A season, not a decline.
We believe perimenopause is a season of peak personal authority, not clinical decline — and that the products a woman uses during it should say so. Our vision is a world where hair care for this stage of life is its own respected, coordinated category, the way skincare already has one for every other life stage: built by women who are living it, for women living it.
Why now
52% of women report hair thinning as a top perimenopause symptom.
Searches for “perimenopause hair thinning” are up 300% since 2021.
Zero clean-label brands currently own this category.
Sourced from independent market research compiled in the Esther & Ruth market analysis.
Who we are
Inside Esther & Ruth.
Clear leadership. Deeply held values. A measured path from listening to launch.
Company structure
One company. Two founders. Clear lanes.
Janice Taylor
Chief Executive Officer
JoAnne Fontanini
President
Rachel
Chief Marketing Officer
Christina
Project Coordinator
Danielle
Support
Kiran
Digital Media Consultant
Esther & Ruth Core Line
Hair density, scalp health and the visible changes of the menopause transition.
The Heritage Line
Whole-body ritual care inspired by JoAnne’s Italian roots and her mother.
Shared direction at the top; distinct ownership throughout the work.
Culture & emotional fitness
How we work is part of what we build.
We make the defining decisions together, meet weekly around progress, blockers and budget, and hold ourselves to radical transparency, honesty and integrity.
Accountability
No story, no gossip. Own the part that is yours.
Discretion
Protect people and the work; do not amplify toxicity.
Resourcefulness
Research first, then bring solutions.
Ownership
Stay in your lane and trust the person in theirs.
Integrity
No exceptions in product, partnerships or conduct.
Authenticity
Root the work in real stories and lived experience.
Inspiration
Help women meet this season with strength and dignity.
The path ahead
From listening to launch.
Weeks 1–301
Listen & test
Present to 3,500 women and learn from the first live audience.
Weeks 3–602
Gather the community
Begin the journey toward 12,000 Founding Members.
Weeks 4–803
Open the first experience
Introduce the initial package to Founding Members and testing partners.
Weeks 8–1204
Finalize the system
Turn education, testing and formulation work into a focused first range.
Weeks 12–2805
Refine & prepare
Build awareness while customization and readiness work move forward.
Weeks 28–4006
Grow & launch
Move from a founding community into a wider market presence.
Target sequence; timing evolves as testing, readiness and audience learning develop.
Education · 01
First, what is actually happening.
Every follicle runs its own clock. It grows for years, transitions for weeks, rests for months, sheds, and starts again — and normally only about one hair in ten is resting at any moment. Perimenopause shortens the growing phase and pushes more follicles into rest at the same time.
That is why the change feels sudden when it is not. You are seeing months of synchronised cycling arrive in one hairbrush.
General education about the menopause transition — not a diagnosis, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or dermatologist about anything specific to you.
Education · 02
You are not losing hairs. You are losing hair diameter.
With the estrogen buffer gone, genetically sensitive follicles produce a slightly shorter, slightly finer hair with each new cycle. Count the hairs and the number may barely move. Look in the mirror and the density is visibly gone — because the same number of strands now covers far less surface.
This is the single most useful thing to understand: the goal of a good system is to keep follicles producing at full diameter for longer, not to chase a hair count.
General education about the menopause transition — not a diagnosis, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or dermatologist about anything specific to you.
Education · 03
The strand changes surface, not just size.
A lifted cuticle scatters light instead of reflecting it, catches on itself, and lets hard-water minerals lodge in the shaft. That is the mechanism behind the three complaints we hear most: it looks dull, it feels like straw, and the grey has gone yellow.
None of those three are caused by ageing directly. All three are addressable.
General education about the menopause transition — not a diagnosis, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or dermatologist about anything specific to you.
Education · 04
What's driving it — and why hair notices first.
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Estrogen
Fluctuates unpredictably before it declines. It drives collagen, sebum and barrier-lipid production, and normally buffers hair follicles from androgen sensitivity.
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The androgen-to-estrogen ratio shifts
Not a spike in androgens themselves, but a shifting ratio — which is why genetically sensitive follicles miniaturise more visibly in this window.
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Scalp sebum & blood flow decline
Less nutrient delivery to the follicle, and the reason hair and scalp start to read as drier than they used to.
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Hair becomes structurally different
Diameter decreases, porosity increases — and porous hair grabs hard-water minerals more readily, showing up as dullness and yellowing on grey hair.
General education about the menopause transition — not a diagnosis, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or dermatologist about anything specific to you.
Education · 05
What is actively working against you.
Most of these were fine at thirty. On a thinner shaft and a lower-lipid scalp, they are not.
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SLS / SLES sulfates
Strip the sebum and barrier lipids that are already declining. Colour fades faster, scalp reads tighter and drier within a wash or two.
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Drying alcohols
SD Alcohol 40, Alcohol Denat, Isopropyl Alcohol high in a leave-in list. Fast dry-down, cumulative dehydration on an already-thirsty shaft.
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High-percentage AHA / BHA scalp peels
A weakening barrier tips into irritation far faster than it did at 30. Frequency, not potency, is what actually helps here.
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Heavy silicone-only conditioners
Slip without repair. They coat a porous cuticle, build up, and mask thinning rather than supporting the follicle.
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All-day leave-on scalp oils
Occlusion plus reduced sebum turnover invites flaking and follicular congestion. Contact-time masks are the safer form factor.
✕
Hard water, untreated
Calcium and magnesium lodge in a lifted cuticle. This is the real cause of dullness and yellowing on grey hair — not age itself.
Ingredient categories, not brand callouts. General education about the menopause transition — not a diagnosis, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or dermatologist about anything specific to you.
Education · 06
From the inside: three honest answers.
Evidence-forward
Pumpkin seed oil
400 mg daily · 24 weeks
The most cited human trial on pumpkin seed oil and pattern hair loss ran 24 weeks at 400 mg per day and reported roughly a 40% increase in hair count versus placebo. Small study, androgenetic pattern loss — but it is the reason this ingredient sits at the front of the conversation.
Check your level first
Vitamin D3
Test, then dose
Low vitamin D shows up repeatedly in women with telogen effluvium and female-pattern hair loss. It is one of the few nutrients genuinely worth a blood test before supplementing, because correcting a real deficiency is meaningful and topping up a normal level is not.
Skip it
Biotin
No benefit without deficiency
True biotin deficiency is rare, and reviews find no evidence that supplementing helps hair in people who are not deficient. Worse: high-dose biotin can distort thyroid and cardiac lab results — which matters enormously to women being worked up for perimenopause symptoms.
Supplement research in this area is small-scale and often male-dominated. We present it as it is, including its limits. General education about the menopause transition — not a diagnosis, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or dermatologist about anything specific to you.
Education · 07
Four categories. Almost every product is only one of them.
Most disappointment in this category is a category error — judging a stimulant by a growth timeline, or buying cosmetic density expecting regrowth.
01
Hair growth
Can it lengthen the growing phase?
Anything acting on the anagen phase itself. Slow by definition — a fair trial is three to six months, because you are waiting on a biological cycle, not a cosmetic effect.
02
Hair fall
Can it reduce how much comes out?
Anchoring and shedding-reduction. Faster to read than growth, and often the first honest win — less hair in the drain before any visible density change.
03
Stimulants
Can it improve delivery to the follicle?
Caffeine, peptides, microcirculation support, scalp massage. They improve the environment; they are support acts, not the lead.
04
Cosmetic density
Can it make hair look fuller today?
Diameter-swelling and light-diffusing finishers. Completely legitimate — as long as nobody sells it to you as regrowth.
Education · 08
How you wash matters more than what you buy.
01
Wet longer than feels necessary
Sixty seconds of water before any product. Properly saturated hair needs far less shampoo to lather.
02
Shampoo the scalp, never the lengths
Two coin-sized amounts, emulsified in the palms first. Fingertips only — never nails. The lengths get cleaned by the runoff.
03
Two short washes beat one long one
The first pass lifts oil and product; the second is the one that actually cleanses. Both stay under a minute.
04
Condition mid-length to ends only
Squeeze out excess water first — diluted conditioner cannot bind. Leave it the full stated time; that is where the repair happens.
05
Finish cooler, and blot — don't scrub
A cool rinse helps the cuticle lie flat. A microfibre towel squeezed, not rubbed, prevents mid-shaft breakage on finer hair.
06
Chelate weekly if your water is hard
A mineral-detox pre-shampoo once a week does more for dullness on grey hair than any shine product.
Education · 09
The system — before any product names.
Order and frequency do the work. A woman could build this from other brands tomorrow; we would rather she understood it than bought blindly.
- 01WeeklyMineral detox / chelating pre-shampoo
- 02Every washBarrier-supporting shampoo — scalp first
- 03Every washConditioner or mask — lengths, timed
- 04DampLeave-in tonic: caffeine, peptides, B5
- 05DampHeat protectant — every single time
- 06DailyScalp serum + two minutes of massage
- 07InternalTargeted supplements, reviewed with a clinician
Education · 10
Then styling — where progress is most often undone.
Heat, honestly
Finer, more porous hair damages at lower temperatures. Drop the tool 20–30°C from where you had it in your thirties and add a pass rather than heat.
Volume from the root, not the length
Root-lift mousses and diameter-swelling sprays read as density. Heavy length-weighting creams read as thinner hair.
Tension is cumulative
Daily tight ponytails and the same parting for years produce traction thinning at exactly the hairline that is already vulnerable.
Dry shampoo is a bridge, not a routine
Useful between washes. Left to build for days on a low-sebum scalp, it congests follicles and dulls the whole head.
Education · 11
It all shows up in the hair.
Hair is a non-essential tissue. It is the first thing the body deprioritises and the last thing it restores — which makes it an unusually honest record of the months behind you.
Alcohol
Dehydrates, disrupts the deep sleep where most repair happens, and competes for the zinc and B vitamins the follicle wants. It is the outside factor women most consistently underestimate.
Sleep
Growth-hormone release and follicular repair concentrate in deep sleep — the exact sleep perimenopause fragments. Night sweats and hair change are the same story from two angles.
Food
Protein and iron are the two most common shortfalls behind diffuse shedding in women. Ferritin can sit inside the 'normal' range and still be too low for hair.
Stress & cortisol
Sustained cortisol pushes follicles into telogen early. Diffuse shedding typically shows up two to three months after the stressful stretch, which is why the cause is so often missed.
What you see today reflects roughly the last three months. General education about the menopause transition — not a diagnosis, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or dermatologist about anything specific to you.
The Grace Field Fund
A field left unharvested, on purpose.
In Ruth's story, the edges of the field are deliberately left unreaped so a woman with nothing can gather with dignity — she takes, she is not given. The Grace Field Fund is that principle as company policy: a fixed share of every Starter Kit and every subscription is set aside before profit, not donated from what is left over.
Set aside first
A fixed [%] of revenue is allocated before margin — the field edge is never harvested.
Directed by the Council
Founding Members elect a 144-member Grace Field Council; the Council hears the stories and votes on the recipients. The company does not choose.
Reported publicly
Every allocation and outcome is published annually, named and numbered.
The founding cohort
Why exactly 12,000 founding members.
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Big enough to fund the field
12,000 founding memberships is the point at which the Grace Field Fund becomes a real, recurring annual budget rather than a gesture — and the point at which our first full production runs are covered without outside capital dictating the formulas.
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Small enough to still be a room
A capped cohort keeps the founding vote meaningful. Every member's ballot carries weight you can actually feel, and every member can be named on the Founders Wall.
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It builds to the Council
Twelve thousand members, twelve by twelve, elect the 144-member Grace Field Council. The number is not arbitrary — the cohort size is designed backwards from the council it has to sustain.
[Confirm the per-member contribution rate and the modelled annual fund total before presenting externally.]
How it works
The Grace Field Council: 144 women who listen, then vote.
12,000
Founding Members
144
Grace Field Council
144,000
women reached each year
01
Hear the stories
Founding Members submit stories of women in their own communities — women walking through health, safety or economic transition. The Council reads, listens and gathers the narrative behind each name.
02
Vote the stories
Council members vote on a rolling basis as member-submitted stories of women arrive. Each vote decides which individual women and aligned organisations the Grace Field Fund will support next.
03
Report the reach
Each recipient reports the number of women helped. We publish the roll-up against the 144,000 annual goal.
The goal
144,000
women supported globally, every single year.
Not cumulative. Not once. An annual floor the fund is designed to clear and then exceed — one thousand women reached through each of the 144 Council seats our members elect.
A stated goal, not a guarantee. Progress is reported annually, whether or not we hit it.
Join us
A community built for the pivot.
Founding Members are women of faith, family and friendship who gather around other women at the moment everything shifts — and help them find their footing. There will only ever be 12,000. They receive every advantage of true membership: select opportunities, business-building support, early access, a vote in electing the Council, and a permanent place on the Founders Wall.
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Sisters in the Season
A private community of women who share faith, family and friendship, ready to walk beside any woman who needs a pivot moment.
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Build With Us
Select business-building opportunities, early access to new products, and every advantage reserved for true membership.
✦
Elect the Council
Founding Members vote for the 144-member Grace Field Council that hears stories and decides which women and organisations the Fund supports.
✦
A Name on the Wall
Every Founding Member is listed, with permission, as part of the brand's origin story.
A single, capped cohort — once full, the door closes.
E&R
New Season, Same Roots.
Thank you for being part of this season with us.
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